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Development of a Multidisciplinary Approach to Access Sustainability
Citation:
Hopton, M. E., H. Cabezas, D. E. CAMPBELL, T. Eason, A. S. Garmestani, M. T. Heberling, A. T. Karunanithi, J. J. Templeton, D. White, AND M. Zanowick. Development of a Multidisciplinary Approach to Access Sustainability. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology. Taylor & Francis Group, London, Uk, 17(1):48056, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
This paper describes an approach to assessing the sustainability of regional systems. It uses four different methods to make the assessment: (1) Emergy Analysis (EA), (2) Green Net Regional Product (GNRP), (3) Ecological Footprint (EF), and (4) Fisher Information (FI). EA captures overall system function using emergy, or quality normalized energy flow, economic sustainability captured by GNRP, EF calculates sustainability in terms of the land areas required for production and processing wastes, and FI determines the relative probability that the present state of the system will change. The four methods taken together give multiple perspectives on what is sustainable and may provide more robust answers than a single method used alone. This paper describes on-going work and not final results. The idea itself has generated some interest, but the long term impact of this work will depend on how useful it is to the stakeholders.
Description:
There are a number of established, scientifically supported metrics of sustainability. Many of the metrics are data intensive and require extensive effort to collect data and compute the metrics. Moreover, individual metrics do not capture all aspects of a system that are relevant to sustainability. A pilot project was initiated to create an approach to measure, monitor, and maintain prosperity and environmental quality of a regional system. The goal was to produce a straightforward, inexpensive methodology that is simple to use and interpret. This requires historical data be readily accessible, metrics must be applicable to the relevant scale, and results must meet the needs of decision-makers. Because sustainability is a multidimensional concept, the research group consisted of a multidisciplinary team that identified the major components of an environmental system. We selected metrics to capture the multidimensionality of sustainability in environmental systems and included: 1) emergy to capture the quality-normalized flow of energy through the system; 2) ecological footprint to capture the impact of humans on the system; 3) green net regional product to estimate human prosperity and well-being within the system; and 4) Fisher information to capture the dynamic order of the system. We were able to compute metrics for a test geographic region using existing data sets. Preliminary analysis indicates that each metric reveals a somewhat different trend. These preliminary findings support the idea that characterization of sustainability requires a multidisciplinary approach and they demonstrate the need to measure multiple aspects of an environmental system.